Saturday, March 31, 2007

We like 27. Kate's birthday is December 27th, my birthday is February 27th, and my dad's is May 27th. So when Kate turned 27 months old on March 27th, it seemed only appropriate to take some pictures to commemorate the occasion. (Not that I need an excuse to take pictures of my cutie!) We went to a nearby park and had a fun walk.

Kate has a new phrase--"It's the wrong one!" She still doesn't say yes, which has made it difficult to figure out what she wants sometimes. "You want this one?" "That one!" "This one?" "That one!" "This one?" I think she know what yes means but she won't say it. We'll hold whatever it is up to her, and if she wants it she taps it. And now if it's the wrong one she'll let us know.

At this moment Kate is sitting on the floor singing loudly and wordlessly to herself, and waving a couple of small fir branches that we brought in yesterday. She sings a lot, and she likes to hold things and make them walk around or dance (that's what she's doing with the daffodil in this picture). We'll have to take these branches out before they start dropping needles on the carpet.

Friday, March 30, 2007

I've got this digi kit that I've been working on, off and on, since about last June. It's based around the baby blue-eyes wildflowers that we found at the park in this post. So I finally finished it and got it all packed up, got the previews made and everything (which always takes longer than it seems like it should) and NDISB's server got overwritten by their host. Ack! The whole site is gone. Theresa is working hard on restoring what she can from an older backup. In the meantime, I wanted to share here.

There are some complicated transparent and glassy effects that I had fun with, and a handmade-style paper with petal and leaf inclusions. Hopefully I can get it up in the store soon!

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Spring is here! We've had some lovely sunny days interspersed with clouds and drizzle. Kate is loving spending more time outside, even if it is a bit wet out. On this particular day she was intrigued by a puddle outside our complex where the water drips down from the roof. She didn't want to come in, so I got the camera. It's been a while since I posted some good screen-saver material for Grandma, anyway!

Our friend PDR sent us this cute pink coat for Kate. It brightens up our cloudy days! And it's big enough that she should be able to use it for at least another year. I especially like the hood, which stays up well.

After sitting, and rolling, in the wet grass, Kate had to have a full change of clothes, but she had a good time. In one of those pictures she's yelling at a seagull overhead.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

A couple of Doug's students (one from Russia, one from the Ukraine) brought him this for his cough. It's a jar with two pieces of tubing through holes in the lid. The long tube ends above the water and the short tube ends in the water. You put hot water in the jar with garlic and olive oil, and then breathe in through the long tube, which pulls in air through the short tube and makes it bubble through the water. (Doug says it's the same principle as a water bong. I didn't ask him how he knew this.)

We were all sick before the move, then mostly recovered, but Doug was out in the rain loading the U-Haul and had a relapse. He got this annoying cough that hung on for over a week. (Which makes things very difficult, when you make a living by speaking to classes every day!) He tried a lot of different things and the garlic jar seemed to finally kick it. He's feeling much better now, and has started tackling the mountain of papers that piled up during the past few weeks.

We are missing our little yard, and our two bathrooms and our walk-in closet. The washer and dryer here are also not quite as nice. But there is quite a bit more storage space in the kitchen, which is great. On the whole, it's not bad. We're probably in the worst spot in the entire complex as far as being surrounded by parking lot on all sides, but there is some nice grass not too far away.

Kate doesn't seem particularly phased (err... fazed. I have been corrected. I knew that. Yeah.) at being in a new place. (She was upset by the old place after we got everything moved out.) It's like, "All my stuff is here, I guess this is where I live now." She's got her little plastic animals all over the living room.

This is the stack-o'-books in Kate's room. What's going to be Kate's room. We found the diaper boxes very useful for moving books (they have handles!) but we only had a few, so we loaded up the boxes, took them over to the new place, stacked the books against the wall, and took the boxes home to get more books. I have since made quite a bit of progress in getting the books back on the shelves, but I wanted to take a picture of the pile first.